


Blood, Regret, Repeat

by shadesofhades



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Hawkeye/ofcs, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Hawkeye/omcs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 05:45:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17258648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofhades/pseuds/shadesofhades
Summary: His body is like a blanket draped across your body, suffocatingly hot in the heat of summer and it feels like a perfect metaphor for your life of late.





	Blood, Regret, Repeat

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the story works challenge over on Dreamwidth for the prompt: Change. 
> 
> I'm really not a fan of 2nd person POV, but this just came out that way so I went with it.
> 
> Thanks to Annabeth for the beta and moral support and to corporalcaptainnincompact for the title and hand holding.

His body is like a blanket draped across your body, suffocatingly hot in the heat of summer and it feels like a perfect metaphor for your life of late.

You always thought medical school would be the worst part about being a doctor, but then residency rolled around and you never realized how you valued your time for drinking and lazily fucking away the night with anyone that would have you. And then came the real world, full of blood and death and real consequences when you didn't know the answer. It was sink or swim, and you stayed afloat -- it has always come easy to you, you were gifted your professors had said, a brilliant student -- but it felt less brilliant with your hands inside some kid with a bum kidney who's life was literally in your hands as the smell of antiseptic stings your nose and the bright lights beat down on you like a spotlight on any tiny mistake you might make.

It's a high pressured job with long hours and stress galore, but what bothers you isn't any of that. It’s the realization that you can't save them all and that now when you drink, the alcohol just dulls the ache you feel when you remember the look in their family's eyes when you tell them you weren't enough.

Then there are the nights you squeeze in between working hours, drunk on martinis and a love you know is only the booze, but you like just the same because for a while you forget the white, sterile environment of the hospital and the smell of antiseptic and death. Instead you bask in the warmth of someone else, smell the tang of sweat and life on their skin and you remember other things. You remember your father asking when you might settle down and start a family, reminding you that you're not nineteen anymore and your mind drifts to the girl you lived with for a year, the girl you loved and thought you might marry if only you could stop finding your way into the beds of strange men. She had said you loved medicine more than her, more than anyone, and although you didn't deny it, you wondered if you might have loved her more if she hadn't been a woman. But you'll forget it later, the fleeting thought of your complicated relationship with your own sexuality and how disappointed your father would feel if he knew.

Last night was one of those nights, where your mind wandered and later you couldn't remember the name of the man that made you momentarily forget your own, but morning comes like a freight train, bright and early and you're too hungover to care that you've done it again. You just peel his body off yours and slip away, because now that you're sober the scratch of his stubble against your back starts to itch and you start to remember why you can't do this sober even though sometimes you wish you could.

And tomorrow your life will continue, a never ending circle of blood and drunken regret set to a steady unrelenting tempo, but today you'll slink away and wash off the scent of him that clings to your skin like a shameful cologne and wait until it starts all over again.

But tomorrow doesn't come because the letter does instead -- the one you've been dreading since you graduated. You dodged one war, but you aren't so lucky this time. 

It feels like the wind is knocked out of you when you open it with shaking hands, the crisp lines of type standing out sharp against the white paper. You want to tear it up, burn it, anything to make it not true, but it won't change the reality of your situation. It won't change the fact that suddenly your life has been ripped away from you and you already miss the bright lights of the operating theater and the shy smile of nurses that you know you'll never fuck but you wish you wanted to. It won't change the fact that starting today your life belongs to the U.S. Army, and most of all you're going to miss the drunken one night stands that mean more to you than you want to admit.

After that, it goes fast, draft board review, basic training, then suddenly your army regulation boots that are a size too big are touching down in Korea, half a world away from where you want to be and you know nothing is ever going to be the same again.

You know there will be temptation just as sure as you know there will be booze and bullet wounds, but you vow to bed only the nurses and just keep your head down and make it through, because you'd already sat through the movie about this at orientation and you knew how it would end if you strayed.

It's like everything you imagined and every thing you didn't -- bodies, blood and spilt guts passing by at a frantic pace that keep you exhausted and delirious, interrupted only by the mind numbing tedium of days that pass like molasses through a strainer. Days where you try to drink yourself to death with homemade gin and try not to notice the tall, blond temptation that laughs and smiles at your jokes, that follows you around like a dog nipping at your heels and that you feel more yourself around than anyone before. 

Drunk between meatball surgery, you pretend not to watch him with nurse after nurse and you pretend you don't feel that tightening in your belly or the way your heart thumps as you think about them together because you've got girls of your own, and you pretend you find them as fascinating as they find you. Eventually, when your charm and wit can't keep them anymore, when they realize you're full of empty promises, they leave you. But there's always another one to take their place in an endless empty cycle that drags you down and makes you long for blond curls and a slow smile he reserves just for you.

Days pass, _fast, fast, slow_ , until six months have come and gone and you no longer remember why you shouldn't, because you swear that sometimes when you look at him you see him look back and when you kiss him for the first time you aren't thinking about army discharges, your father's disappointment or about the girl you lived with in college; you don't think about anything except how sweet bad gin tastes on his lips and how perfect you fit together.

You aren't even that drunk, the first time you two tumble into bed together, bodies dripping with sweat and strain and a perfect rhythm you've never found with someone else. You forget the misery, the blood, the bombs, you forget to think about anything but him inside you and the nirvana you feel at the words he whispers against your skin -- words he might not mean, because chances are this whole thing is as temporary as the police action that brought you together in the first place, but you savor them just the same because you've never felt this way about anyone before. 

The logical part of you understands that the arms that make you feel safe, that keep you grounded, will do the same one day for a woman back in Boston. You don't fool yourself into thinking you've found some sort of happily ever after -- not when you are acutely aware of the stack of letters he keeps hidden under his mattress and the picture he keeps pinned above his bunk -- but afterwards you rest comfortably with his chest pressed right up against your back and you don't feel that familiar tug of regret you've grown so accustomed to after.

In the morning, with sobriety sneaking in and the sound of choppers beating in your ears, you don't think about the suffocating heat of his body or the feel of him draped across you, you just think about how for once you don't want to leave, even as the cry for all personnel crackles across the loudspeakers.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at captaincaptaincupcakethings for more MASH things.


End file.
